KSU's world-renowned Pawpaw Orchard video tour

hi I'm Shari Crabtree horticulture research and extension associate at Kentucky State University hi I'm Kirk popper and I'm a professor of horticulture Kentucky State University I worked with pop on a number of other food crops so a Kentucky State University we've actually had a pop up program for over 20 years and so we've done a lot of different things in terms of just trying to figure out how to grow pawpaws on an orchard setting trying to control diseases or insect pests and then a lot of the things that we've been doing lately are breeding for a better paw Paw's so we work with farmers who are wanting to get started growing new high-value crops such as Paw Paw we also develop post harvest storage techniques for Papa and value-added products such as Paw Paw ice cream Paw Paw Jam and pop up bread recipes so the trees are 15 years old they're mostly ku cultivars sunflower in Susquehanna although there's a few I said this is ksusha pal and the original KSU vent sentry is also in this portrait it was actually originally a rootstock trial which for writing a paper I'm writing that data up right now on that now it's just kind of a disarming orchard that we harvest fruit from to make ice cream and jam and we've had a few other graduate students that are working on a study and looking at Disease Control you notice these black spots on the leaves and there's black spots on the fruit also you see the spots on these fruit and that's a fungus a fungal disease called Silas dicta and so she was looking at spraying copper and sulfur as organic control measures for that pilot we don't really know which varieties of pawpaws should be planted together to get good fruit set and just like in apples there's there's many different named varieties of pop off and so we had a graduate student processing these different varieties basically found under their somewhat soft purple but it's no better days for them to cross these are not the main pollinators of Papa flowers it's actually flies so you want to promote in the springtime using the people they get trees flower but any other way to attract flies and then during the flowering is good black and white striped butterflies flying around the zebra swallows the old butterfly Papa actually plans if you're playing a butterfly guard want to include pop on tree submitters that do drip irrigation is one gallon per hour around the harvest they tend to flower or an extended period of time in the spring and so you can purpose thing from that same treatment over the course of a month and so a lot of times we're coming out here you go through and harvest and then there's already falling later on that day because they start to ripen up so it's that's the one labor-intensive thing is sustained harvesting pawpaw does take a bit of time we want to use a lot of that personal processing a lot of interest rate now in fermentation industry we've seen everything from yeah Brandywine big products right now but yeah surprisingly makes a pretty good hot sauce kinda like a mango habanero using the tropical like flavor that Papa has a lot of utility in different ways a lot of folks are very creative up there trying to find new uses for harvest around here starts around the last week of August so we started harvesting probably the early fruit around August 22 then it's usually about the 1st of September and now we're starting to wind down but we'll go through about late September that's when all the so it is like doctor says harvest is the most labor-intensive part but fruit or green leaf again you'll see just a little bit a black spot and that's it's cold final stick that it's a black fungus and it doesn't go into the fruit is just on the surface but it's still you know he tracks away from the appearance so that's why we have a student who's trying to find a way that to keep that from happening at least lower incidence what problem is a rainstorm then you know sudden expansion on the fruit with the rain it'll crack and I'll destroy the fruit so that's another reason why containing similar to an apple tree to what's called a central leader system versus leaving them basically and pruned and pawpaws naturally have kind of a bushy growth habit don't have a lot of low branches well we found their pros and cons to both so pruning them like an apple tree they had a stronger structure so you choose the strongest branches with the best branch angle so they had a nice strong structure they're easy to pick from they're a little bit more open to see the fruit and reach in and pick them we didn't get any sunburn on the fruit and the the prune trees they were a little bit slower to come into production a little bit lower yielding just because you're removing some of the branches that would have pretty anyway one thing we do when they get a little bit older as you see this cut right here so problems will get to be about 20 to 25 feet tall generally in full Sun they can get 30 to 35 feet is about the maximum they say so as they start to get taller will cut that central leader outs at about you know five to six feet high to keep the tree shorter and more manageable and easier to harvest from so it's actually called a modified central leader if you look at the trunk of that degree this fall is paint that trunk white and we're going to use the dilute it really takes paint get that trunk on the southwest side and warm it up it will lose its cold hardiness and then if it gets really cold again that part of the tree is actually gonna die and so we found that unless we paint these trunks white and the wintertime we have a much higher incidence of that crack and search really journal the tree after a while and so the older trees will die after a while if they if they get too much of that damage so especially for folks who have a little bigger trees anything about two inches or larger would be a really good idea to paint with that diluted latex white paint and that's that's not it's kind of on peach trees so you can find articles about it too but for other reasons but but the Southwest century is a big problem paw Paw's in the wild are part of the understory and forest so they grow and the shade more naturally usually along rivers and streams in places so in the wild they're found in the shade a lot of people think papaya trees require shade to grow which is actually not the case mice are over 18 inches tall when they're under 18 inches they are sensitive to full Sun plus they're over here this tall they can be son and you get the best yields so they will grow in the shade vegetatively but they won't produce very many fruit in the shade this is probably a little windier and a warm and work your little holy wish a lot of times the wind is coming in from the southwest and we tried to start some windbreak snow on the other workers because if you think that the the benefit from that especially maybe even having a little bit of a break from the maybe the afternoon Sun is a good thing but they do need me on full Sun to be able to produce enough fruit and that that really is a common problem you love holes folks have a pop up patch in their woods I never get any fruit in that and so basically it's either because it's too heavily shaded or sometimes there's not genetically different pop-up trees there they're just all the same tree basically withering suckers and so they don't cross-pollinate sometimes you're just not enough goats around apparently there's none of flies to be able to have that cross-pollination we want to thank Cheri and Kurt so much for their wonderful tour of the Paw Paw word shirt as well as the overview of the Paw Paw program again if you're interested in any of our content don't forget to Like and subscribe to us on YouTube Facebook any social media and stay tuned for more videos coming up soon

Channel: Beargrass Thunder

Views: 27,972

Keywords: beargrass thunder, ksu, kentucky state university, pawpaw, paw paw, fruit, orchard, farm, farming, agriculture, food forest, native, exotic, trees, program, education, usda, kentucky, frankfort, research, demonstration, tour, nature walk, nature, swallowtail, butterfly, grow, growing, tips, food, edible, garden, horticulture, agricultural, Harold R. Benson, Harold Benson

Id: aCpmpldRG8k

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2019